Liverpool bride to be had to plan her fiance's funeral instead on their wedding

Caroline Waine of Woolton. Caroline had to withdraw from the Echo Win a Wedding Competition after the death of her fiancé, Stuart Murphy, from cancer. Pictured here with his Liverpool FC blanket and their wedding planning book. Photo by Ian Cooper

Share

Get daily updates directly to your inbox

Thank you for subscribing!

Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email

She wanted to organise her wedding this year.

Instead Caroline Waine helped to plan her fiance’s funeral.

The love of her life, Stuart Murphy lost his battle with cancer on March 12, only 14 months after the couple met and fell in love.

“Stuart was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma just four months after we met,” says Caroline.

“But it’s like I was there to help him through it - and I am so proud and privileged to have been able to do that.

“I would have liked to have longer with Stuart, but I would rather have had that short time with him than to never have been with him at all.”

Caroline , pictured here with his Liverpool FC blanket and a photograph of him (Image: Ian Cooper)

Caroline and Stuart entered the Echo’s Win A Wedding competition amid hopes of beating the illness and cementing their love with a dream wedding.

But Caroline was forced to withdraw her entry after Stuart sadly lost his life.

She contacted us to say: “Thanks so much for entering my partner and I in the Echo to win a dream wedding, but unfortunately, and with great sadness, I will have to withdraw from the competition as Stuart passed away... He lost his battle with cancer at the age of 31.

“It was our dream to get married but there wasn’t enough time. I was at his bedside holding his hand so he wasn’t alone.”

And she signed it ‘His broken hearted fiancee’.

Theirs was a love and a relationship that was clearly meant to be, if not to last.

Caroline had known of Stuart 13 years ago because he worked with her sister, Vicky, but it was only at the beginning of last year that the couple actually met.

Stuart Murphy and Caroline Waine - in March 2014. Caroline and Stuart hoped to marry until cancer took his life on March 12 this year.

“Stuart invited me over to his home in Rainhill and offered to cook a meal for me. I wouldn’t have done that normally but I asked Vicky if she knew him and when she told me he was nice, I said yes.

“We got on really well; he was such a nice, genuine, caring fella, lovely and funny... and he was fit!” she smiles.

“I had two weeks off work and so we spent a lot of time together and got to know one another really quickly. It’s like it was meant to be.”

Life was looking good until April last year when Stuart developed a lump in his neck.

“He joked that he could be allergic to chocolate as it was Easter,” says Caroline, who works in pharmacy and IT at the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital. But as the lump swelled and he began to have other symptoms, Stuart knew he had to seek medical advice.

All smiles. Caroline and Stuart in happier times in March 2014.

It was at Whiston Hospital Stuart discovered that there were lumps in his chest too, and a biopsy revealed the cancer.

“I stayed with him throughout the day of his biopsy, passing him water and whatever he needed, I didn’t want to leave him. He said it was that day he realised I was ‘the one’.”

From May to October last year, Stuart, whose parents Stephen and Sharron flew back from their home in Spain, to help look after him with Caroline, underwent a variety of chemotherapy treatments.

He suffered mouth infections as a result of it which left him unable to eat and speak, and he was in great pain. Caroline spent her days at work and her nights at hospital with Stuart.

In the July, Caroline says he told her he wanted to show her how much she meant to him: “He gave me a hug and I said I loved him, after which he asked ‘enough to say yes?’ And he got out this ring,” she says, touching the sparkling diamond ring she still wears.

Stuart was always due to have a bone marrow transplant in November at the Royal Hospital, but in September/October, the lump in his neck returned and a new chemo regime was established. The lump went away but, again, came back.

“In between the last regime and his transplant Stuart had to go to Clatterbridge for radiotherapy, but he remained the joker, always positive. It was during the transplant time that a doctor told us ‘you are going to need a miracle’ but still we didn’t give up hope. We said we would marry in January.

“Vicky bought me a wedding planner and we decided who would come, the songs we would have, who the bridesmaids and best man would be. I went dress shopping just the once.

“We had a lovely Christmas but Stuart began to get more pain and he said he knew it had come back.”

The doctors found another chemotherapy regime to try: “We even pencilled in a date for the wedding in March, before we saw the competition in the Echo,” says Caroline. “We could have got married earlier but Stuart said he didn’t want my last memory of him and our wedding to be him on his death bed.”

Loving couple Stuart and Caroline .... but their love was not to last.

Caroline and Stuart remained hopeful they could be married, but they both realised it wasn’t going to be possible.

“For the last four days of his life, I barely let go of Stuart’s hand and before he died I told him I loved him and asked him to visit me in my dreams.

“It took me 33 years to find him and he got taken away, but I feel I was there to get him through it.

“We may never have been married but I loved him, in health, and in sickness.

“I wish I had had longer with him, but I treasure the time we had.”

And she adds: “We might not have the chance to win our wedding but I wish the couple who do all the very best and urge them to cherish each other and their married life.”